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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23881843">Copper and Starlight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourdailymask/pseuds/ourdailymask'>ourdailymask</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:00:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,612</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23881843</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourdailymask/pseuds/ourdailymask</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Age of Elves is ending and the last of the Mirkwood elves arrive at the Grey Havens. Some partings are more difficult than expected.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tauriel (Hobbit Movies) &amp; Thranduil (Tolkien), Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)/Thranduil (Tolkien)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>75</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Copper and Starlight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They arrived upon Grey Havens in the morning, cohorts of gleaming silver and brambles and green, last of the woodland realms to reach the shores of the Western Sea. The Elf King called his company to halt, and Silvan and Sindar elves alike watched in weighted silence as their ship lowered its gangplank to the shore.</p><p>Thranduil nodded to Mirhil, his second in command, and the last Captain of the Woodland Guard called the company forward. The elves began to walk aboard, and true to their nature, a voice rose in song somewhere along the line, soon joined by other voices, some wistful, some soft, but threaded with hope and the joy of returning to a long-forgotten home. The wind picked eagerly at the Elf King’s cloak as he looked upon his people now singing and laughing, merry natures ill-suited to sorrow. But he could not find in himself the same easy joy. There was still a crossing. Still a parting. A life spanning many centuries in this land was hard to leave lightly. Without meaning to, his gaze returned to the figure on the cliffs looking down upon them. Her green-garbed form was arrow-straight, her hair burnished copper in the grey light of dawn.</p><p> </p><p>(“I cannot go,” She had told him. “My Lord, I am too young of this place to leave it so soon. There are too many things I have not seen, too many places I have not explored…” She hesitated.</p><p>“Have you felt so trapped as Captain of my Guard in Mirkwood, Tauriel?” He asked coldly, and felt pleased that she looked away in shame and hurt.</p><p>“Of course not, my Lord,” She took a breath. “I could not have wished for a higher honour serving you.” She knelt at his feet. The Elf King gazed down at hair that spilled like the dying leaves of autumn. “Do you command me to cross with you across the Western Sea?”</p><p>The Elf King smiled, only slightly and only because he knew she could not see. How like her, even now, even after all these years, to challenge him even as she knelt at his feet. When he spoke, he made sure his words were cold and level. “You would follow, even if in your heart you would choose to stay?”</p><p>Tauriel looked up, the long lean lines of her face too expressive to contain a glowing fierceness. He could not tell if it was loyalty or pride. “I would follow you to wherever you command, my Lord.”</p><p>He knew she spoke truth. But an anger he could not name forbade him from speaking kindly. “Then do as your heart desires”, he told her. “Valinor has no need for captains of a woodland guard.”</p><p>She flinched, and he easily read the hurt and relief in her eyes. A distant part of him marveled at her youth, the way emotions tripped carelessly across her face. Perhaps it was not youth. The worst of her hot-headed tendencies had been tempered by her responsibilities the last few decades. But her restlessness nature was never truly concealed. Even a thousand years would not serve to dampen a spirit as irritating as it was irrepressible. </p><p>The King did had several millennia to master the art of concealment, and no sign of the sudden cracks within his chest could be read in the cool measured expression he wore.</p><p>“Very well. You shall accompany the host to the West, to the Gray Havens, and there resign your duties as Captain of the Guard.”</p><p>Tauriel nodded. “Mirhil would be suitable, if you wished for a Captain in the crossing.” She had offered quietly. “He is even-headed and loyal.”</p><p>The King nodded but could not find the strength or interest to speak any longer. Her betrayal —it felt like nothing else —weighed too deeply upon his chest.)</p><p> </p><p>His people filed by him, each step that carried them closer to the ship suddenly falling lighter and lighter upon the earth. The pull of Middle Earth was fading already from them, and they seemed less solid in the morning mist. Even the young ones, who had never set foot upon the water or the distant shores, were giddy with the promise of return.</p><p>Why could she not see this, he thought with sudden anger. Why must she be so difficult? Does she not realize this is to come home?</p><p>And why, he wondered, something sharper than anger digging into his heart, why is it so impossible to imagine crossing to the West without her by his side?</p><p>The King looked upon the waters, the foam cresting among gray-green waves, dappling as they played under the gray light of dawn. He could not imagine how this had come to pass. Since when had her face — her voice, her presence – become such an ache in its absence?</p><p> </p><p>(He knew when. In the Last Battle of the Ring, against the dark forces that had stormed from the north, from behind the gates of Dol Godor, when his son battled before the gates of Moria, and the sky flashed in storm and lightning.</p><p>He knew when. Her hair swirling like fire upon her shoulders, knives flashing deadly as she battled, his Captain, always by his side even when he did not see her. And when he looked again, the moment frozen, of an Orc blade sliding under her defense, her mouth gasping, her eyes widening, her feet stumbling.</p><p>…there were too many, too many…</p><p>And his heart almost stopped, watching fire flickering down to the earth, blood spilling into her hands, like blood against silver hair, so long ago, another face he had not watched fall but had dreamt it all the same.</p><p>…and he could only think <em>not again, not again, never again….</em></p><p>He did not remember coming to her side, his blade biting and hewing orcflesh of those beasts foolish enough to stand in his way.</p><p>
  <em>…not again, not this, never this…</em>
</p><p>He could barely remember the remainder of that battle. There was space widening in his mind, a cold blank chasm that did not deal with the tragedies of the past or the horror of a possible future. But after, when the last of the orckin laid dead or fleeing, he knelt at his Captain’s side, her blood dark against the stone. She smiled weakly at him, the tawny lines of her face drawn and pale.</p><p>“I do not recall granting you permission to die.” He told her, voice cold, even as his hand gently pried her bloody fist from her side.</p><p>“It seems I may disappoint you yet again, my King,” She whispered. And inside he laughed and cried and wished desperately that he had not had to lead another of his kind into death. Too many centuries on this earth. The past weighed too heavily upon him.</p><p>She did not disappoint him. The healers found them and she was carried, along with all the other injured bodies, to recover as the rest tended to the fallen.</p><p>He did not have the time in the bloodied aftermath to wonder what it meant that the voice in his head had thought of silver hair and screamed <em>not again</em>.)</p><p> </p><p>The wind was warmer now and almost all his people had boarded. Mirhil looked up at him expectantly as the last row filed aboard the ship. The King dismounted from the great woodland beast that had borne him this far. The elk bowed its head to its King, who rested a hand upon its brow in farewell. It would return now to its ancestral home and any man or beast to stand in its way would suffer its massive hooves and sharpened antlers. He bade it safe travels and watched as it loped away.</p><p>The King walked up the gangplank, Mirhil following close behind. As Thranduil stood upon the deck, his people gathered behind him, he turned to face the shore again. And again, his eyes sought the figure on the cliff.</p><p>She was gone.</p><p>The sharpness in his chest cut into his lungs, and he could not breathe. One elf, he berated himself. She was one lowly Silvan elf – a valuable Captain, yes – but one young elf nonetheless. He had spent barely a century with her by his side, compared to the millenniums he had spent without her. Since when did she exert such a pull upon him?</p><p> </p><p>(He knew when. The war had ended and he had found himself wandering through his palace to discover her gazing at the stars above the trees.</p><p>She had let him join without comment, a slight bow in deference, but as always there was steel in her. No bow felt complete.</p><p>The Elf King looked upon his realm, the night silvered and the trees glittering softly in a westerly wind. Even in this woodland realm, so far east, he thought he could taste the salt and bite of the Western Sea.</p><p>“Our time draws to a close.” He murmured. The knowledge had been seeping into his realm, his palace, his bones, for some time even before the final battle, but this was the first time he had permitted the words spoken out loud. “This is now the age of man.” Far in the distance the fires and white roofs of Dale shone in the moonlight. There was no regret in him, he realized. Only the briefest of melancholies at another age passing. There was so little left to tie him to this land.</p><p>She said nothing, but he could feel the sudden sadness in her stance, the way her shoulders tensed against the inevitability of his words. Now he looked back and knew what she feared. It was there in the proud lines of her profile, the stubbornness of her jaw, the fire in her hair. Such a different profile from another he had long ago lovingly beheld, beautiful and Sindarin, silver hair and skin like petals and moonlight. In comparison, the Captain of the Woodland Guard was just copper and wood and starlight…</p><p>…starlight?</p><p>He looked away, across the realm of moss and wood he had ruled over for so many millenniums. The Elf King knew he would miss the softness of its winds, the tangled mysteries of its roots, the infinite brushstrokes of its leaves, but the West was calling.</p><p>“I wonder,” Tauriel spoke suddenly. He glances at his Captain. “I wonder if the stars are the same?”</p><p>He was struck by the sudden longing in her voice and the realization, sharp and unexpected, that even as he was already looking Westward, he had not imagined leaving without her by his side.</p><p>The King pushed the thought away and looked up at the bright pinpoints of light scattered in careless swirls above their heads. He could not think of an answer for her, and instead they stood in companionable silence until the prelight of dawn clouded the starlight and without a word they went their separate ways.)</p><p> </p><p>He did not think of this again until he stood on the swaying deck of a westbound ship, looking at the empty space on the cliff.</p><p>“My King,” Mirhil stepped forward. “We await your command.”</p><p>The Elf King laid a heavy gaze on his second-in-command and his people. The sun struck through the softness of the cloud-strewn sky and spilled light on the rippling waters of the Western Sea.</p><p>The wind had changed and his people were waiting to return home.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Tauriel walked away from the Western Sea, the wind now a soft murmur against her back. It had hurt to look upon her people leaving, her last and only kinfolk boarding a ship to a home she had never known. But despite the tugs of sorrow and loss at her heart, she could not help raising her eyes to the sudden broadness of the world, the clear and sheer expanse of sky that beckoned.</p><p>There would be other ships, she thought. Few but there would be others. Not all the elves had left yet, the pull of Middle Earth still stronger than the pull of the West for some of her kind. That would not be for much longer and she wanted to see a few more corners of this Earth before she would leave it behind.</p><p>She knew Legolas was still wandering the earth with his dwarf friend, Gimli, and for a moment her thoughts wandered back to those unexpected, breathless, tender moments from so long ago, the young dwarf prince whose path had crossed with hers and then cut away so abruptly. Watching the last of her woodland kin sailing to their new home, she had thought of him, a pain that time had never quite dulled. To you Kili, she thought, and all the adventures we never had.</p><p>Memories of him were always painful. But in some ways it was a simpler pain, sharp and focused, and not the bewildering loss of everything she had ever known, her people, her world, her King. The memory of her last parting with the King still stung. She had not expected the cold disappointment in his eyes when she had told him of her intention to stay. In the last few centuries by his side Tauriel had grown accustomed to a grudging approval. Now its chilly absence cut deep. She had the greatest respect for her King, won anew in the Battle of Five Armies when she had seen in him a reflection of her pain. In that moment, he had been more than distant or commanding or terrifying. He had been something like her for a moment, neither Sindarin or Silvan, just two souls who had loved and lost and now knew that of each other. Something like a respite between frost and fire.</p><p>But still. There was no cause to put so much stock in his regard of her. If Tauriel thought the King had been disappointed in her decision to stay, the emotion could not have registered as more than a heartbeat. She was, whatever her position in the Guard, only one of his many subjects in the end.</p><p>The wind rose again, and shifted, the sharp smell of salt cut by a southerly breeze that wafted with the scent of flowers and soil. She smiled despite herself. It was not in her nature to dwell in sadness and a world still lay ahead, not behind.</p><p>“You never were one to linger long.”</p><p>The voice, deep and cool and confident, froze her stride. She turned and there he stood, her King, tall proud, clothed in silver and blue, hair silken and gleaming and…</p><p>…and crownless.</p><p>He approached slowly, and Tauriel could not move. Over his shoulder she could see the ship that had begun its slow journey into the West. Then her King was before her, so tall she could no longer see the sea. His face was impassive, his brow wide and proud, his stance regal. But his eyes searched hers, and for the first time she could remember, Tauriel saw uncertainty uncoiling in their depths.</p><p>“But…your people,” Tauriel managed finally. “Your crown…” She raised a hand towards the space above his head but stopped when she realized what she was doing.</p><p>He said nothing for a moment, and the wind brushed his hair into disarray across his shoulders. Then he smiled – a brief pull of his lips, but a smile nonetheless. Long, graceful fingers caught hers.</p><p>“It would seem,” Thranduil said slowly, not pulling any closer, but keeping his fingers tangled with hers in a way that made her heart leap and fall at the same time. “It would seem that there is no need of Kings in Valinor either.”</p>
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